This is not an April fools joke: Commonwealth Bank removes ‘everyday’ internet banking fees

3 April 2006

The Commonwealth Bank has addressed customer concern over NetBank fees introduced in July 2005 and today announced it will remove fees for two NetBank services, effective from Monday April 3.

Scheduling and everyday third party payments on NetBank will now be free of charge in line with other everyday NetBank services such as unlimited access to account balances, transaction information, transfers to a customer’s own accounts and BPAY payments.

According to Michael Cameron, Group Executive – Retail Banking Services, the Bank acknowledges that the introduction of some NetBank service charges in July 2005 caused confusion and concern for some customers.

"Although 90 per cent of our customers don’t incur the NetBank service fees, they told us the fees were too complicated so we have moved to address their concern and simplify NetBank."

"Our customers can now again make unlimited use of NetBank for everyday banking without worrying about NetBank service fees."

There are no NetBank service charges for unlimited use of:

third-party payments (except payments made using a transfer group*);

NetBank’s scheduling service to set transfers or BPAY payments to occur on a future date;

NetBank is Australia’s most visited online banking site with approximately 35,000 new customers being added each month.

With this change customers are able to make unlimited use of NetBank for everyday banking without incurring any NetBank service fees.

NetBank service fees now only apply to specialised services, most commonly used by businesses. These are:

third-party payments using a transfer group

file imports

additional log-ins

Customers can "pay-as-you-go" for these services or take up the NetBank Business Plan, which provides unlimited use the above NetBank services for $8.00 per month. Customers already using Business Plan can swap to "pay-as-you-go" at any time, without charge.

* A transfer group is a pre-defined set of payees. Customers use transfer groups to make a batch of payments, with the total amount being debited as one transaction to their account. A typical use is for salaries. These transactions will continue to attract a fee.